'Bully in het Oerwoud'.
Berend Dam was a Dutch illustrator, painter and comic artist from Arnhem. His comics output was made exclusively for the publishing house Mulder & Zoon, for whom he produced the series 'Bully Dog' (1956-1958) and continued the final episodes of J.H. Koeleman jr.'s 'De Avonturen van Pinkie Pienter' (1958-1959).
Life and career
Not much is known about Dam's life and career, not even his birth location. He was born in 1927, and signed his work with either "B. Dam" or "Bedam". Dam is mostly remembered for his comics work, which is limited to the second half of the 1950s. He passed away in 1999.
Bully Dog
In the 1950s, Dam was affiliated with the publishing house Mulder & Zoon in Amsterdam, for whom he created his signature comic 'Bully Dog' (1956-1958). The original series (1956) consisted of eight hardcover albums, and featured the adventures of an anthropomorphic bulldog. Like most traditional comic heroes of the time, Dam's dog adventurer visited all parts of the world. He hunted for treasures, visited ghost castles, controlled jungle animals by feeding them magical pills, served as sheriff in the Wild West and experienced adventures in Turkey and India. By 1958, Mulder & Zoon released all eight adventures again, but this time chopped up in smaller comic books, resulting in sixteen new books. At the same time, Mulder also released the series in French language ('Bull Dog').
'Bully Dog'.
Pinkie Pienter
In 1958, Dam was commissioned to work on the children's comic 'De Avonturen van Pinkie Pienter' by J.H. Koeleman. In the 1950s, 'Pinkie Pienter' was a best-seller, with translations in English and French, despite Koeleman's lack of experience in drawing comics. In 1958, however, Koeleman had a dispute with his publishing company, Mulder & Zoon, who wanted to boost up sales by re-releasing older 'Pinkie Pienter' stories with only 16 pages per booklet. Mulder shortened the stories randomly, or just ended them halfway a scene. He even went so far to give "new" titles to the older stories. It was an obvious and disgusting marketing scam that Koeleman refused to cooperate with. To keep the top-selling series going, Mulder hired Lex Overeijnder to whip out new 'Pinkie Pinter' stories. Overeijnder however took so much liberties that he copied entire panels and plotlines from Hergé's 'Tintin'. By the time Berend Dam was assigned to the series, Mulder & Zoon already had two lawsuits on their neck: one by Koeleman and another by Hergé.
It's interesting to note that Dam's 'Bully Dog' stories were re-released in the same chopped up manner as 'Pinkie Pienter', which might be an explanation why he was hired by Mulder, or why he didn't seem to be morally bothered by participating with this scam (if he had any knowledge of it at the time). Dam wrote and illustrated three 'Pinkie Pienter' stories, which never even saw print in his home country! 'Le Vieux Taxi', 'Cirque Hakibro' and 'Un Vol Pour Rien' were printed solely in French in the issues #51 through #59 of 'Les Aventures de Martin le Malin'.
'Les Aventures de Martin le Malin' #52 - 'Le Rubis Géant'. A French-language 'Pinkie Pienter' story, never released in Dutch.
Dam started work on a fourth 'Pinkie Pienter' story, but by that point Mulder was legally forced to instantly discontinue the series. While 'Pinkie Pienter' has remained a cult favorite for its charming naïvité and seemingly improvised storylines, this appeal mostly semts from Koeleman's original stories. Both Overeijnder and Dam apparently had to work under such strict deadlines, that their output became very sloppy.
Postcards by Berend Dam.
Greeting cards
From the 1940s through the 1960s, Berend Dam drew many postcards, most series depicting cute little children and military humor. Many cards were self-published under the imprint "Berend Dam, Arnhem". Through the publishing house Gebr. Spanjersberg B.V. in Rotterdam, he also released several cards with his comic character 'Bully Dog'. The folded cards had a color drawing on the front, and a short comic strip inside with text in rhyme.
Comic strip from one of the 'Bully Dog' postcards.